As our population continues to live and stay in the work force longer, the goal
of promoting health and wellness across the lifespan has gained increasing
prominence at the national and the campus level. Faculty at the Beckman
Institute, distributed across our core themes, have made and continue to make
critical contributions to this goal. The HABITS initiative is designed to
systemize and coordinate these efforts to create cross-cutting “Beckman-led,
campus-wide” intellectual and educational opportunities and innovations.
Health research at the Beckman Institute comprises a broad range of
areas.
It includes cutting-edge work in bioimaging, from the level of tissues to whole
behaving organisms. For example, Beckman Institute researchers in particular
have been leaders in developing methods that noninvasively measure biological
systems using light. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has been developed in
large part here into a clinically useful tool in developmental biology, as an
aid for surgery and cardiovascular imaging, and as an early cancer detection
tool. Other forms of optical imaging including near-infrared spectroscopy and
event-related optical imaging, which provide real-time measures that can be used
to track brain changes that accompany different cognitive processes. A multitude
of other imaging technologies are also being developed and refined at the
Beckman Institute. Work in this area has clear research, clinical and commercial
applications: it has opened up new research directions and created novel tools
for not only detecting, but also classifying, and diagnosing disease.
Research and technology also come together in a number of lines of work
centered on augmenting biological systems and repairing or replacing damaged
ones. This includes looking at chemical changes during the body’s response to
injury, developing novel drug delivery techniques, creating intelligent hearing
aids, studying brain plasticity after cochlear implants, and using brain
imaging, eye-tracking, and computational modeling methods to understand how the
brain changes in response to different kinds of experience and interventions.
In fact, a number of research lines at the Beckman integrate biology and
psychology, again along with novel technology, to understand perception, memory,
language, emotion, and decision-making -- how those processes develop and
mature, what they are like in the healthy state, and how they can can go wrong.
This includes investigations of neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders such
as Fragile X mental retardation, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease,
stroke, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, and Alzheimer’s disease. Again the
focus is broad, spanning from understanding how these conditions arise, how they
manifest in various aspects of behavior and biology, how they can be more
accurately diagnosed and classified, and, ultimately, how they can best be coped
with or remediated.
Ultimately, many of these lines of research converge in work centered on the
promotion of successful aging. Novel imaging methods allow a more detailed
understanding of the molecular, cellular, and system-level changes that take
place over the healthy adult life span, and allow investigations into the
cognitive and emotional consequences of those changes. For example, research at
the Beckman Institute has been critical in showing how physical activity and
exercise influence cognition, brain structure and function, and ultimately
quality of life in people of all ages. Other work, through the Senior Odyssey
project, has also looked at how multimodal interventions, which encourage
sustained social and intellectual engagement, can promote cognitive success and
health in older adults. And research looking at how language functions change
over the lifespan has provided important insights into the factors that promote
effective communication, which is critical for gaining health related
information and for maintaining the social ties that are a cornerstone of
health.
The HABITS initiative seeks to support and develop these lines of work and
others like them -- seeding research directions and to taking existing ones to
new levels. The initiative will provide infrastructure for faculty and students
to come together and build integrative, cross-cutting health-related enterprises
at even larger scales -- ultimately creating centers and programs to further
support research and technology development, but also to advance education and
training. Health is an area that the University as a whole is very committed to,
and the Beckman Institute is well-positioned to be a critical hub for that
campus-wide activity. In addition, this initiative promises to provide a rich
interface between the Beckman Institute and the community at large. The
community supports work at the Beckman in many ways, from participating in
experiments to providing invaluable expertise and financial support. In turn,
the fruits of this initiative are poised to richly give back to the community,
in the form of new opportunities and ultimately improved physical and mental
health for everyone.